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Bet 49ers at Their New Home Against Broncos in Week 2

The San Francisco 49ers have a new stadium ready to roll out for Sunday night’s Week 2 preseason matchup with the Denver Broncos. Will that be enough motivation for San Fran to trample the NFL betting lines?

Candlestick Park was a pretty good place to watch a football game. It helped getting to see players like Joe Montana and Steve Young and Jerry Rice and Roger Craig, but still. Was it a good place to see a baseball game? Heck no. Everything you’ve ever heard about the wind and fog and general nastiness was true. But there’s a meteorological term for those conditions: football weather.

Anyway, it’s over now. The San Francisco 49ers have a shiny new stadium about 50 miles away in Santa Clara, named Levi’s Stadium for corporate purposes. Not a lot of wind around there. Or amenities, for that matter. We’ll get to see the Field of Jeans host its first NFL game this Sunday (4:00 p.m. ET, NFLN) when the 49ers welcome the Denver Broncos. Our NFL odds at press time have San Francisco laying 3.5 points with a total of 40.

Thunderball
Maybe the 49ers will play a little harder Sunday and try to christen the new stadium with a victory. It would be good for optics. It’d also be good for San Francisco fans who got soaked last week when the Niners (+2.5 away) lost 23-3 to the Baltimore Ravens. San Fran head coach Jim Harbaugh was 8-4 ATS in the preseason heading into that matchup, but Week 1 took our preferred NFL betting trend and put it in the wood chipper.

Even Pete Carroll couldn’t get to the pay window last week. He was 23-9-1 ATS in exhibition play before his Seattle Seahawks (–1 away) went to Mile High Stadium and lost 21-16 to the Broncos. Talk about lousy weather: Play was suspended during the first quarter for nearly an hour after lightning struck nearby. It was an awful game with tons of mistakes and 25 penalties. But Denver got a tiny taste of Super Bowl revenge, and Broncos coach John Fox improved his preseason record to 22-26 ATS.

Big Brother Is Watching You Practice
Although each side in Sunday’s matchup has played 60 minutes of regulation faux football, the Niners should be better prepared for Week 2. After losing Thursday’s game to the Ravens, San Francisco spent three more days in Baltimore running joint practices with the winners. Pretty handy that the Ravens are coached by Jim’s older brother, John. The Broncos have a similar arrangement in store with the Houston Texans, but those teams don’t meet until Week 3.

Denver might also be a little short at running back this week. Montee Ball could miss the whole preseason recovering from an appendectomy, while C.J. Anderson suffered a concussion against the Seahawks and had to leave the game. Rosters are still at 90 players until Aug. 27, so there’s no shortage of warm bodies to put in the backfield, but after you get past Ronnie Hillman on the depth chart, you’re dealing with the likes of Juwan Thompson and Kapri Bibbs.

Brock Busters
Then there’s the matter of Brock Osweiler. Peyton Manning’s back-up is the only other QB who saw any action against Seattle; third-stringer Zac Dysert was kept on the sidelines, possibly because Denver is planning to keep only two quarterbacks on the roster, and doesn’t want to let anyone else get a glimpse of Dysert in action before he goes on the waiver wire. Maybe the Broncos will be able to slip Dysert through waivers and put him on the practice squad.

So why didn’t No. 4 QB Bryn Renner get any snaps? And will any of these guys get to show their stuff against San Francisco? All these questions and more should be answered as we get closer to kick-off. For now, I’m happy to take the Niners in their new home.